Due to the advances made in reducing the small and improving the performance of information apparatuses or electronic information technology such as digitization of information, various signal processing apparatuses, specifically various AV apparatuses, data recording and/or reproducing apparatuses, communication apparatus, information processing apparatuses, etc. have become popular.
These apparatuses and apparatuses manage data and signals by various methods.
For example, computers and other information processing apparatuses, storage apparatuses using disk-like storage media as storage media, etc. often use a so-called file system for managing files by a directory structure so as to manage data organized in units of files. This file system can specify a file by designating a path or URL.
On the other hand, there is no concept of a file in for example video data recorded by a camcorder or signals of a television broadcast. These are often managed as a series of stream data by a specific signal format depending upon the content thereof.
Along with the spread of the above various types of information processing apparatuses and signal processing apparatuses, there is rising demand for linking apparatuses which have been operated independently up until now so as to use them comprehensively. Namely, demand is rising for freely exchanging data among all of the various apparatuses, centrally managing the data, or getting the various apparatuses to cooperate and link together to perform desired information processing and provision of information.
Up until now, however, no technique has been established for efficiently and simply linking the data management environments of file systems or the management environments of specific signal formats. Central management of such data was not possible. For example, under the present circumstances it is difficult to handle an apparatus connected to a control device basically managed by a file system by a control terminal or i-Link and signals handled on the apparatus in the same way as ordinary file data by software in the control device—it is barely possible to fetch data by outputting commands to an I/O device.
This becomes an obstacle when constructing a more efficient information system by linking various information and data. Improvement is desired.